The Good Children

March 2, 1998
Seamless storytelling and believable characters caught in a bizarre, inescapable situation make this latest psychological thriller from three-time Nebula Award winner Wilhelm (Malice Prepense) taut and satisfying. "When you've got family, you don't need anything else," Lee McNair tells her children. After an industrial accident kills her husband, the distraught McNair makes the four children promise they'll never let strangers touch her when she dies. The children find themselves called on to honor that promise when McNair is killed in a freakish backyard accident. Afraid of disobeying their mother and equally afraid that they'll be sent away to foster homes, the children bury her in the backyard and are forced to lie to neighbors and pretend that she is still alive. Their attempts to keep up the ruse are eerily successful--except that the youngest of the children begins to lose his sanity. Eventually, the McNairs call the authorities to report their mother's sudden disappearance. The youngest child's troubles deepen and a new piece of information about their mother's accident threatens to break up their carefully unified front. A young society lawyer, charged with looking in on the "abandoned" McNair children, creates another kind of complication when he falls in love with the engaging teenage narrator (and third McNair), Liz. Wilhelm's spare, unsentimental style contributes nicely to the mood of this well-told gothic tale.

Three-time Nebula Award winner Kate Wilhelm creates an unsettling account of a family of four children who are trying to stay together under devastating circumstances. After their father is killed in an accident, their emotionally distraught and reclusive mother burdens them with an impossible promise. When their mother dies shortly afterward, the children try to abide by their promise, finding themselves sinking deeper and deeper into a tangled web of deceit. Carrington MacDuffie is convincing as Kevin, 15; Amy, 14; Liz, 11; and Brian, 6, attempt to hide their mother's death, hoping to avoid the foster care system. MacDuffie's treatment of Brian's slide into a psychological nightmare is especially chilling. Wilhelm's finely crafted thriller is made even more memorable by MacDuffie's sensitive performance. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine